The Induna's Wife. Mitford Bertram

I went out to issue my orders, and hardly had I done so, than the King himself came forward, and making a sign to myself and two or three other izinduna to attend him, sat himself down at the head of the open space. The while the roars of bonga which greeted his appearance mingled with the howling of the gang of witch doctors and the shouting and blows of the royal guard, beating back the excited crowd with their sticks and shields. In very truth, Nkose, it seemed as though the whole nation were gathered there.

      Suddenly a silence fell upon the multitude, and even the bellowing of the izanusi was stayed, as there came through the throng, creeping upon their hands and knees, nearly a score of men. Their leader was a fine and well-built warrior of middle age, whom I knew as a fierce and fearless fighter, and they had returned from “eating up” the kraal of one of the subject tribes in accordance with the King’s mandate. Now the leader reported having carried out his orders fully. The evil-doers were destroyed, their houses burnt, and their cattle swept off as forfeit to the King.

      “It is well,” said Umzilikazi. “Yet not for that ye have obeyed your orders has the whole nation gone mad.”

      “There is more to tell, Great Great One,” answered the warrior, upon whose countenance, and upon the countenances of his band, I could descry signs of dread. “In returning we had to pass through the land of Maqandi. Two of us fell to the Red Death.”

      “To the Red Death?” repeated the King, speaking softly and pleasantly. “Ha! How and where was that, Hlatusa?”

      Then the leader explained how he had allowed two of his followers to wander into the Ghost Valley in pursuit of a buck they had wounded. They had not returned, and when sought for had been found lying some little distance apart, each terribly ripped and covered with blood, as though they had been rolled in it.

      “So?” said the King, who had been listening attentively with his head on one side. “So, Hlatusa? And what did you do next, Hlatusa?”

      “This, Black Elephant,” answered the man. “Every corner of that tagati place did we search, but found in it no living thing that could have done this – ghost or other. In every cave and hole we penetrated, but nothing could we find, Father of the Wise.”

      “In this instance, Father of the Fools,” sneered Umzilikazi, a black and terrible look taking the place of the pleasant and smiling expression his face had hitherto worn. “Yet, stay. What else did you find there? No sign, perchance?”

      “There was a sign, Divider of the Sun,” replied Hlatusa, who now considered himself, and they that were with him, already dead. “There was a sign. The hoof-mark as of a huge bull was imprinted in the ground beside the bodies.”

      “And wherefore did ye not rout out that bull and return hither with his head, O useless ones?” said the King.

      “No bull was it, but a ghost, Great Great One,” replied the leader. And they who had been with him murmured strongly in support of his words.

      “Now have I heard enough,” said Umzilikazi. “You, Hlatusa, you I send forth at the head of twenty men, and you return, having lost two – not on the spears of a fighting enemy, but in strange fashion. And no one do ye hold accountable for this, but return with a child-tale about ghosts and the hoof-mark of a ghost-bull. Hamba gahle, Hlatusa. The alligators are hungry. Take him hence!”

      With these fatal words the throng of slayers sprang forward to seize him. But Hlatusa waited not to be seized. Rising, he saluted the King; then turning, he stalked solemnly and with dignity to his doom – down through the serried ranks of the people, down through the further gate of the kraal, away over the plain, keeping but two paces in front of his guards. A dead silence fell upon all, and every face was turned his way. We saw him stand for a moment on the brow of the cliff which overhung the Pool of the Alligators, wherein evil-doers were cast. Then we saw him leap; and in the dead silence it seemed we could hear the splash – the snapping of jaws and the rush through the water of those horrible monsters, now ever ravening for the flesh of men.

      Chapter Two.

      “Behold the Sign!”

      The silence was broken by a long, muttering roll of thunder. Masses of dark cloud were lying low down on the further sky, but overhead the sun darted his beams upon us in all the brightness of his mid-day fierceness, causing the great white shield held above the King to shine like polished metal. To many of us it seemed that the thunder-voice, coming as it did, was an omen. The wizard spell of the Red Death seemed to lie heavy upon us; and now that two of ourselves had fallen to its unseen terror, men feared, wondering lest it should stalk through the land, laying low the very pick and flower of the nation. Murmurs – deep, threatening, ominous – rose among the dense masses of the crowd. The King had decreed one victim, the people demanded another; for such was the shape which now those murmurs took.

      Umzilikazi sat in gloomy silence. He liked not the sacrifice of good and brave fighting men, and the thing that had happened had thrown him into a dark mood indeed. Not until the murmurs became loud and deafening did he seem to notice them. Then the izanusi, deeming that their moment had come, took up the tale. Shaking their hideous ornaments and trappings, they came howling before the King; calling out that such dark witchcraft was within the nation as could not fail to destroy it. But upon these the Great Great One gazed with moody eyes, giving no sign of having heard them; and I, watching, wondered, for I knew not what was going to follow. Suddenly the King looked up.

      “Enough of your bellowings, ye snakes, ye wizard cheats!” he thundered. “I have a mind to send ye all into this Ghost Valley, to slay the thing or be slain by it. Say; why are ye not ridding me of this evil thing which has crept into the nation?”

      “That is to be done, Ruler of the World!” cried the chief of the izanusi. “That is to be done; but the evil-doer is great – great!”

      “The evil-doer is great – great!” howled the others, in response.

      “Find him, then, jackals, impostors!” roared the King. “Whau! Since old Masuka passed into the spirit-land never an izanusi have we known. Only a crowd of bellowing jackal-faced impostors.”

      For, Nkose, old Masuka was dead. He had died at a great age, and had been buried with sacrifices of cattle as though one of our greatest chiefs. In him, too, I had lost a friend, but of that have I more to tell.

      Now some of the izanusi dived in among the crowd and returned dragging along several men. These crawled up until near the King, and lay trembling, their eyes starting from their heads with fear. And now, for the first time, a strange and boding feeling came over me, as I recognised in these some of the Bakoni, who had been at a distance when we stamped flat that disobedient race, and had since been spared and allowed to live among us as servants.

      “Well, dogs! What have ye to say?” quoth the King. “Speak, and that quickly, for my patience today is short.”

      Whau! Nkose! They did speak, indeed, those dogs. They told how the Red Death was no new thing – at least to them – for periodically it was wont to make its appearance among the Bakoni. When it did so, it presaged the succession of a new chief; indeed, just such a manifestation had preluded the accession to the supreme chieftainship of Tauane, whom we had burned amid the ashes of his own town. The Red Death was among the darker mysteries of the Bakoni múti.

      Not all at once did this tale come out, Nkose, but bit by bit, and then only when the Great Great One had threatened them with the alligators – even the stake of impalement – if they kept back aught. And I – I listening —Hau! My blood seemed first to freeze, then to boil within me, as I saw through the ending of that tale. The darker mysteries of the Bakoni múti! – preluding the accession of a new king? The countenance of the Great Great One grew black as night.

      “It is enough,” he said. “Here among us, at any rate, is one to whom such mysteries are not unknown. The Queen of the Bakoni múti– who shall explain them better than she?”

      The words, taken up by the izanusi and bellowed aloud, soon went rolling in chorus among the densely-packed multitude, and